


En Guarde

by gawain_in_green



Series: Lymond AUs [2]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Discworld AU and Crossover, F/M, ScotSwap Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 19:13:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19340860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gawain_in_green/pseuds/gawain_in_green
Summary: “Philippa, do you seriously think you could kill a person?”“Ah,” said Philippa, raising a dignified finger. “Mr. Crawford says the proper word is ‘exhume.’”A series of scenes regarding various Lymond Chronicles characters and their adventures on the Discworld.





	En Guarde

**Author's Note:**

> This is a ScotSwap gift for Arenal! Physticuffs on tumblr. It was a beast to write, and I'm not happy with some of the characterization, especially Francis, but here it is. I think the biggest challenge was trying to mesh the styles of both Pratchett and Dunnett. But it was such a fun prompt and I had a great time in the end, thank you! <3

I.  
  
Vimes did not, on the whole, appreciate the finer merits of diplomacy. He had an inherent suspicion of diplomats. Anyone, in his opinion, who preferred canapés to a good hearty sandwich had a natural affinity for fast-talking and back-stabbing. He had explained this to Sybil, he had explained this to Vetinari; he had even, in a fit of desperation, explained it to Mr. Lipwig in the hopes that someone would take pity on him. No one had. And so he stood reluctantly in front of the Quirmian ambassador, nursing a glass of apple juice and wishing it was more.  
  
The most unsettling thing about the man, he had concluded, was the eyes. There was nothing inherently suspicious about eyes the same exact icy blue as Lord Vetinari’s. There was, however, something surely criminal about that highly familiar look of mechanical intelligence.  
  
“So you’re Mr…” Vimes paused, and tried to remember. “Croissant?” he hazarded.  
  
“Crawford,” the man said smoothly. “A pleasure.”  
  
“Crawford’s not a Quirmian name,” said Vimes, trying and failing not to sound suspicious.  
  
“I’m not Quirmian.”  
  
“Oh,” Vimes said. “Why not?”  
  
The ambassador tilted his head slightly, and moved his mouth in a method that was to smiles what wolves are to small frilly dogs. “Serait-ce mieux que ce que je suis? Besides, as the great poet Maisonnier once said, chin up, smile, and concern yourself with the platter of snails before you.”  
  
Vimes wished pathetically that Sybil were there to interpret that asinine statement. Perhaps it had some deeper meaning that you had to pay AM$700 every year all through childhood in order to unlock. “Ah,” he said. It was a useful syllable, nearly as impressionable as ‘sir.’ “Right. Have you had an interview with Lord Vetinari yet, by any chance?”  
  
“I have,” said Crawford. “Some years ago, in fact, on an entirely different matter.”  
  
“Oh,” said Vimes. “Did any civilian casualties result from the encounter?”  
  
“They had already occurred.” Crawford smiled, once, sharply. “That was the subject of the discussion.”  
  
Vimes squinted at the ambassador, and ran his face through the mental rap sheet he carried around everywhere he went. “Hold on,” he said, as it all clicked. “You’re from Ankh-Morpork! I know you!”  
  
“Do you?” said Crawford. “You know me only in a professional sense, and as I was cleared of all crimes, I don’t believe you have any knowledge of me at all. Good evening, Sir Samuel.”  
  
A waiter came by with a platter, trailing two young dandies behind him like feeder fish. Vimes put his empty glass of apple juice on the tray, tersely thanked the server, and looked up. To his utter lack of surprise, the Quirmian ambassador had vanished into thin air.  
  
It didn’t matter. Vimes, a bloodhound to his core, had caught the scent.  
  
  
II.  
  
“Anyway,” said Tiffany, “that’s how you make cheese.”  
  
“Very satisfying,” said Philippa, “but I shan’t ever be able to recreate it. The matters of dairy are far above me.”  
  
“It’s simple. You just need patience.”  
  
“I haven’t any,” said Philippa morosely, “my mother took the whole jar of it. Do you know I’m supposed to go off to boarding school this year?”  
  
“Yes.” Tiffany pulled a length of string from her pocket and used it to measure the block of cheese. “I do.”  
  
Philippa had not grown up on the Chalk, precisely; she was a daughter of one of those minor lords somewhere in between the Sto Plains and the Ramtops. A borderland that held political relevance, of course, but to which country no one was quite sure. Tiffany liked her, although she thought the girl would be better off for a little less money. So did Philippa: it was one of her many graces.  
  
“I think it’s a waste of time,” said Philippa stolidly. “Too much frippery.”  
  
“You’re supposed to learn all sorts of fancy things there,” Tiffany said, absentmindedly grabbing a rag. “Help sweep up, would you?”  
  
“Oh, yes.” Philippa neatly caught the broom that Tiffany tossed her way. “Sorry. You know, I’d rather go off to the big city.”  
  
“What would you do there?”  
  
“I don’t know. Anything. Become a clerk. Join the Seamstresses’ Guild. Study to be an Assassin.”  
  
Tiffany very assiduously did not say: you’d make a damn good witch, you know.  
  
Philippa took great pains to not respond: I have too many fancy middle names for any of the common folk to respect me.  
  
Tiffany smiled. “You’d make a good Assassin,” she said, instead of wishing Philippa had been born with fewer unshakeable titles.  
  
“I would rather.” Philippa tossed the broom in the air, let it flip once, and caught it just next to the brush. “En guarde!”  
  
She was a year older than Tiffany, but it never felt that way. “En guarde yourself,” said Tiffany, pulling out a swathe of parchment paper. “Why don’t you do it?”  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Apply for the Assassin’s College.”  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“You dress up as a boy often enough.”  
  
“They take girls now, actually.” Philippa gave her a dashing smirk. “I heard dear Mr. Crawford mention it to my mother the last time he graced our halls with his presence.”  
  
Tiffany had never met the infamous Mr. Crawford, and Philippa had assured her it was no great loss. “Ah, well, there’s your letter of recommendation right there.”  
  
“Mr. Crawford?” Philippa laughed a laugh so dry that vultures might have stalked it. “He would never. He hates me.”  
  
“Mmmm,” said Tiffany tactfully.  
  
“What’s ‘mmmm’ supposed to mean?”  
  
“Secret witch language,” Tiffany said, tying up the wrapped cheese. “For me to know and for you to guess. Anyway, was Mr. Crawford an Assassin?”  
  
“He got his certificate but he never took any contracts. At least, according to Kate.”  
  
“So who else could you get a letter from,for the sake of discussion?”  
  
“Well,” said Philippa thoughtfully, pausing to rest her hands on the broom. “Would you write me one?”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Me!”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Tiffany stopped passing the cheese back and forth awkwardly between her hands, and gave it a moment’s thought. “I suppose I am a minor political nuisance,” she said doubtfully.  
  
“That’s perfect, then.”  
  
“I have met Duke Vimes.”  
  
“Great! You can strategically avoid mentioning that.”  
  
Tiffany looked at Philippa for a long moment. “You’re serious.”  
  
“I think I might be,” said Philippa, and all of a sudden her voice sounded like that of a lemming standing atop a very high cliff with no clue as to how it had gotten there. “That’s not good. Is that good?”  
  
“Philippa, do you seriously think you could kill a person?”  
  
“Ah,” said Philippa, raising a dignified finger. “Mr. Crawford says the proper word is ‘exhume.’”  
  
“We know what we think of Mr. Crawford.”  
  
Philippa cast about for somewhere to sit and came up empty. Instead, she stared solidly at a point several feet to the left of Tiffany’s head. “I think I could,” she said seriously. “But it needn’t come to that. It’s a polite gentleman’s college, no actual murder necessary.”  
  
“Right,” said Tiffany, “sure.”  
  
Tiffany didn’t believe it for a second. From the harsh light that had gone on behind Philippa’s eyes, neither, deep down, did she.  
  
  
III.  
  
“Mr. Crawford,” said Lord Vetinari, pacing down one end of his long desk. “What an unexpected delight, and in such an… official capacity.”  
  
“Lord Vetinari,” said Francis Crawford, ex-Assassin, ex-Dark Clerk, and ex-wanted traitor. “An honour.”  
  
“Commander Vimes tells me he had an uncomfortable conversation with you at a reception last night.”  
  
“It was mutually beneficial.”  
  
“But of course. Pray tell, do you play Thud?”  
  
Not a muscle moved on Francis Crawford’s ceramic face. “I have been known to.”  
  
“Ah. Perhaps not Thud.” Lord Vetinari smiled, brightly, with all the warmth of a sunny day in January. “I believe the last time we spoke we had a minor disagreement about music.”  
  
“I have not played music in some time,” said Crawford. “Like a magpie, I must guard some pleasures to savour in my retirement.”  
  
“Then I believe our discussion resolves itself-- do tell me if you find yourself reading sheet music as a curative. At any rate, Mr. Crawford, your retirement seems a distance away. Has it advanced itself more than I know?”  
  
Crawford cast his eyes along the familiar room, out the familiar window, and then finally locked gaze with the familiar blank stare of Lord Vetinari. “I’ve always heard Uberwald is lovely,” he said.  
  
“Ah. The thanatophobe’s route.”  
  
“Gods, no,” said Crawford, with sudden violence. “You think I fear death? I wish every day that I did.”  
  
“And what will you use in place of blood?”  
  
There was a moment of stillness: Vetinari paused in his pacing, leaned backward stiffly against the side of the desk; Crawford stood at the side of the room with one hand raised to the bookshelf, his shoulder-length blond hair silhouetted in the muggy afternoon light. “Do you know,” he said, without moving a muscle, “if you’d asked me three years ago I would have said music.”  
  
“And now, Mr. Crawford?”  
  
The spell was broken. Crawford smiled, or rather, he moved his face in a manner that somehow separated itself entirely from any meaning while still going through the motions of courtesy. Lord Vetinari straightened. Any semblance of empathy was gone.  
  
“I might as well use blood,” said Crawford, airily.  
  
Vetinari nodded thoughtfully to himself. “I’d be interested to see if anyone noticed the difference.”  
  
The visit concluded. They bowed their heads slightly to one another, almost imperceptibly. Crawford left. Lord Vetinari sat. Both of them gazed out over the city of Ankh-Morpork, and both of them thought the same thing: _if only that man had any morals to speak of._  
  
  
IV.  
  
“So what’s the contract?” said Philippa Somerville, M.A., roughly six years later. Her feet were not propped up on the table, but her attitude suggested that they could have been if she had wanted them to.  
  
Beside her sat her two longtime dormmates, Catherine d’Albon and Joleta Reid Mallett. Neither of them had their feet on the table either, but Joleta was sitting in a chair in an incorrect but stylish manner.  
  
“An interesting one, and with no fixed date,” said Dr. Marthe. No one knew her last name. “There’s a reason I called all three of you here.”  
  
They glanced at each other. They glanced back at her. She grinned like a shark.  
  
“Have any of you ever met my brother?”  
  
  
V.  
  
“God damn Assassins,” muttered Vimes under his breath, to no one in particular. “As if roof repair wasn’t expensive enough already.”  
  
  
VI.  
  
One fateful year later, there were three letters on Marthe’s desk: a request from Joleta Reid Mallett for a grant towards weaponized footwear research; a notice of retirement from Philippa Somerville; and an invitation to a wedding. She tossed the first into the fire, frowned at the second, and was about to burn the third as well when the return address caught her eye.  
  
“Oh, Francis,” she said softly. “You bastard.”  
  
  
VII.  
  
Sir Samuel Vimes decided he would attend the wedding. His reasoning went thus: the chances that he could arrest either the bride or the groom were relatively high. This made him happy.  
  
  
VIII.  
  
Sybilla Crawford lived her life in Ankh-Morpork, and never encountered a single Ramtops witch. When she finally died at the age of eighty-seven, having never met Esmerelda Weatherwax, Fate passed a fiver to Lady Luck.  
  
She looked at it, and then glanced down at the cosmic gameboard. “You still owe me,” she said.


End file.
